Side dish

Most of my projects have been on the side. Before my mission, for example, I digitized a handful of books for Project Gutenberg in my off time, including retypesetting Henry Sweet’s An Icelandic Primer from scratch. In the mission office, some of my projects that ended up being my “legacy” of sorts (the 1000 Word List, the romanized Thai hymnbook, the revisions of the Plan of Salvation) were unassigned things that I did on the side. Since then, most of my really interesting work has also been peripheral to school and work (Project Cumorah and Riverglen Press, Beyond, the translations of the Plan of Salvation, and all these websites and blogs, to name just a few).

My point? I’ll let C.S. Lewis make it for me:

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.

Sure, I’m busy with school and work, and it’s hard to make time for bookmaking and web design and writing and all the rest, but I’m always going to be busy. As one of my co-workers put it to me last night, at the end of my life will I look back with regrets that I made time for these projects, or will I instead regret that I was always “going to do them,” never actually accomplishing anything because the conditions were unfavorable?

An incentive to pressing forward in spite of unfavorable conditions is the realization that constraints fuel creativity. Instead of complaining, we ought to revel in limitations. Be a Houdini. Humans are great at innovating their way out of constraints, and often that’s where the most exciting work happens. Don’t be afraid. You’re smarter than you think.

Looking into the future for myself, I see many, many more projects — dozens of Riverglen Press books, a new handcrafted CMS for all of my websites (along with better graphic design), a lightweight genealogy web app, a book of essays on creativity (more about that soon), children’s illustrated books, an orchestral work or two, and hundreds of other exciting projects, providing a lifetime of satisfaction in living my dream instead of dreaming my life. In my old age I’ll look back on these days in fondness. Were they easy? Not always. But were they worth it? You bet.